Auto installation fails

[Don]

Hi there,
Tried updating automatically twice and it failed.
Results say old plugin can't be removed.

Restored from backup both times to get to yesterday's blog state
again.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Don

[Carson]

That sounds like an issue with your hosting not with the plugin. If
you have access to the directory structure you need to make sure the
directory is owned by the user the web server runs as.

[Don]

Permissions are set at 755 for the folder, as they are for all the
other plugin folders. I regularly auto update other plugins with no
problems. Does the plugin need to be deactivated before updating? I
think your script should do that correct?

[Carson]

Those permissions seem fine but the directory is probably owned by
someone other than the user the web server runs as. You will need to
make sure it is owned by the correct user. It shouldn't need to be
deactivated. The auto-update is part of the core of wordpress and not
part of the plugin itself. All it is doing is downloading the zip file
and uncompressing it over the existing plugin directory, you see the
error you are seeing when wordpress can't overwrite what is currently
there.